Here are my personal submissions for phase three of the Hallmark Program. I also decided that from now on I would write about how I shot them and what not so here we go.
I ended up shooting my self-portrait about three times before I actually came up with an idea of how I really wanted it to look. The shot came out exactly if not better than I hoped. I got the glasses and pens at a dollar store and I already had the shoes from salvation army from another shoot. Then I rented out a 35mm lens for my Mimiya MF Camera.
The light set-up is all with Profoto CP600’s. For the background we had two 3×4 soft boxes on either side at the same power to turn that white. Then we had two 1×4 soft boxes on either side of me pointing down on the foreground around my feet to turn that white. Then we threw a beauty dish above me and we ended up using a white umbrella for a fill on my torso and pants. So in all we used six lights and pretty much all full power…needless to say we blew the fuse twice. But we got some good shots. I’ll have to post the actually images later so you can take a look at them. Then even with all those lights the background wasn’t as white as I wanted it which is white without detail. So in post I pretty much painted it white then added a drop shadow by my feet to give it some base. Then standard dodging, burning and cloning.
Also in my post work I wanted a more cartoony feeling because it was already goofy so I did a little fill light and recover in LR for a more cartoonish look. Doing that caused a halo effect around a few edges which I painted with white when I did the background. But I’m really happy with this shot it came out fun.
In note: It took me a whole week to grow that mustach out! I tought that was a funny fact and I would throw that in there. I also burned that down later to make it look even better.
I really like this shot of Hribar this kid is a awesome guy to photograph and also an awesome photographer him self (LINK).
The lighting set up consisted of 3 ProFoto CP600’s. For our key light we had two 1×4 softboxes on either side of my 80mm Mamiya lens right in front of him. Then we also added a hair light from directly above him with a snoot attached to that, and I cropped it out of this image but it worked really well with the other shots.
So I had a few ideas of how I wanted to shoot him the one above was actually not one of them. We were just going threw expressions and all then I had him turn profile and I got this image above.
In post I work it all pretty much in LR by fixing the white and black points and greyscaling it. Then I took it into PS for a little more processing by burning and dodgeing to give the shadows a little more depth and to bring out his steps in his hair which I love.
This shot is also Hribar.
With this shot I we once again used Profoto CP 600’s. For the rim lights we had two parabolics on the left and right side behind him at about a 45 degree angle. But we found that threw some light into my lens causing lens flare. So we threw the 1×4 softboxes on either side of him so we could block that light (they were not on). So now that we have some rim light hiting his shoulders we needed to put a nother parabolic right behind him on low power to seperate him from the background.
Now that we had our lights all set up we started shooting and the smoke was showing up great with the rim lights lighting it up but not any of his face. But I wanted the tip of his cigarette to light up so we ended up dragging the shutter for about 8 or so seconds to burn that in.
In post I ended up compositing the best of the best. So I took the shot where he had his head down a little more than the others and started there. Then I took a shot where we really dragged the shutter and got a good glowing tip of the cigarette and threw that in there. After that I took another shot of some smoke and added that to the original photo. Then I took the white smoke on the left side of his mouth and flipped it to the right because to me it looked kind of light eyes and it was creepy so I did it. and yea thats that I really love this shot.
The following three images below I shot at Hallmarks open house. I actually got really lucky and ended up working in the portrait studio so I was able to get these shots for my assignment. (lucky lucky me) so I shot a little bit in the beginning but I wasn’t getting anything I liked. I didn’t like the set up we had it just wasn’t working for me.
Towards the end of open house we ended up setting these shots up with some more Profoto CP600’s. We had two 3×4 softboxes on the background and one silver umbrella above and to my camera’s left. And I pretty much started grabbing people to shoot that were also there working. Once again lucky me because we were all required to dress nice.
Here is Maria I shot this with a 80mm.
Here is Richard even tho he ended up modeling for other students 37 times he was kind enough to jump in for a few shots. Also shot with a 80mm lens.
Here is Sara another student that was shot quite a bit. Shot this one with a 120mm Macro. Very nice lens the only problem with it and the MF Mamiya is you end up having to retouch the blood vessles in the models eye.
Here is a shot of Macy’s watch. I went into this shot knowing pretty much how I wanted it to come out which makes my life much easyer on the shoot.
The lighting set up was one 3×4 softbox directly above Macy’s watch and that light up the circular metal around the watch face. But the angle of reflectivity was just not working on the corner metal pices of the watch so I painstakingly had to set up 3 more lights one 2×3 from behind my table and two 2×2’s on either side of my Toyo view camera to light those corners up. And I just want to say thank you to pressured air in a can it saved my life on this shoot and is my new best friend.
In lighting: For the face of the watch I tried many many ways of exposing for it. I couldn’t use the 3×4 softbox above my set up because it lit the metal great but caused the glass to fog up. So I ended up leaving on the other 3 lights and cranking them up about half a stop and that gave me a good exposure with detail on the face.
In post: I did the usual exposure fixes and all that. Then i took the two images I shot and composited the good looking face of the watch onto the good looking metal and background of the watch. Making it look pretty darn sexy don’t you think?
In note: That metal was pretty sketchy I don’t know who put that in the prop room but I’m just glad I didn’t cut my self.
Macy was also kind enough to let me shoot some Acqua Di Gio and I picked that bottle because thats how I got my girlfriend and I just thought I would pay a tribute to the company. No I’m playin but she does love the smell. So I’m thinking about keeping this in the long run.
The set up: was a 3×4 softbox from behind shooting threw a scrim for a little more defusion. Then I had my bottle set up on some apple boxes witha sheet of glass below it. Then I had a parabolic on a boom stand directly above my camera aming at the cap of the bottle and the text as well. I took a couple shots like that then I ended up adding two more lights. I added two 2×2 softboxes on the right and left of the bottle to give those highlights on the cap. So as you can see there are three good looking strips of light on that cap and its looks pretty darn good huh? So I shot a few frames of that and it was just too boring looking so I grabed a spray bottle and just started out light then ended up dumping the water all over it.
In post: I picked out the heavyer beaded water on the bottle but I composited a shot of littler beads on the glass and front of the bottle. and I found this mixture of images to look the best.
